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Dr. Johnson's Table Talk: Containing Aphorisms on Literature, Life, and Manners; with Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons, Selected and Arranged from Dr. Boswell's Life of Johnson

Book by Samuel Johnson · 8 quotes · Men, Mean, Adversaries

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Dr. Johnson's Table Talk: Containing Aphorisms on Literature, Life, and Manners; with Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons, Selected and Arranged from Dr. Boswell's Life of Johnson Quotes

“Conjecture as to things useful, is good; but conjecture as to what it would be useless to know, is very idle.”

“Oratory is the power of beating down your adversary's arguments and putting better in their place.”

“Wasting a fortune is evaporation by a thousand imperceptible means.”

“Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.”

“[C]ourage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.”

“The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.”

“Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politics, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.”

“Most vices may be committed very genteelly: a man may debauch his friend's wife genteelly: he may cheat at cards genteelly”